Sunday, December 17, 2017

I used to be the one buying groceries, preparing meals for the family. Sincerely, I know I did a poor job, and I didn't particularly enjoy it. I found myself always buying the same ingredients, making the same meals. Worst, I lost even the motivation to cook dishes I used to cook. My husband pointed out : he barely sees curry chicken, clay-pot chicken anymore.

Things just gradually changed. I needed to cook dishes that I know my kids would at least eat. And, time was pressing, after picking up kids from school, I didn't have much time nor energy left to prepare somethings more decent.

Since I was the one buying grocery, there was a bookkeeping in my mind. We just finished this, we were running out of that, we needed to buy this, the kids demanded that. I was not used to plan ahead neither. I started planning dinner when I drove home, or the night before. And I remembered I had that and this ingredient left in the fridge.

Except that, it was mostly hubby who handled meals during the weekend. And sometimes he did complementary groceries for his own needs. I would complain : why did you buy bacon again? We had three packs sitting in the fridge! You know we had two bags of potatoes here, and you just bought the third one? Due to my complains, he would buy according to what I ask him to use in the fridge. But then it created another problem, I didn't know what he was going to cook, and when he was going to use the last pack of "lardon", I protested : No! I needed that for tomorrow dinner! He was so frustrated that he yelled at me : everything I do it's just wrong to you!

Then it comes this planning change, a change I welcomed with my heart. He decided to take care of the kids on Wednesdays (4/5ème). Now he works 4 days a week and I switched to full time. Since Awena goes to school as well, we can finally do the one parent sends them in the morning one parent pick them up at the evening model. I choose to send them because I'm not a morning person. Most of the time during the week, when I got home, the dinner is served. Except evenings when I work from home so would pick them up right after school, and sometimes I prepare dinner.

But mainly, hubby handles grocery.

And what happened? The other day, I heard him saying : did you use my mushroom?

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

On the 30th of November, one day before the kids were allowed to open their advent calendar, I saw that Awena had already took out 3 chocolates out of hers. Unlike her sister, she is just someone who doesn't listen to her parents. Hubby caught her hiding the chocolates in her room.

On the second day of December, six chocolates were gone, amid our warning that she would soon run out of it, and someday she would just see her sister eating chocolate while she has non. The warning didn't work, she refused even to open the box by date. She just randomly chose the boxes she wanted.

On the fourth day of December, she decided to open all the boxes, got out all the chocolates, and laid them on the floor.

On the 7th day of December, all the chocolates were eaten. Meanwhile, the big sister follows the rule, she patiently enjoys a chocolate per day.

Maybe that's because she's three that she doesn't understand things, or that's just her nature personality. She is just so different from her elder sister. When we said no to candy, the elder one was disappointed but did nothing. Whereas the younger one, she smiled at you, did nothing in front of you, but eventually you would find out that she ate a candle, at your back.

I hope things get improved. The house is a mess permanently and 80% of the damages came from her. She is just so unbearable.

We are at Christmas season but I had something to record to myself about Halloween.

Halloween was not a big event in general in France. For example it didn't have the Halloween parades in most of the cities just like in the US. Last year the kids were away, we got so many kids knocking on the doors that we were so fed up at the end.

Can you see her arm cast? Well, she broke it the first day of school holidays, on the trampoline. It seemed ok at the beginning, but she cried during the night, her hand was swollen the second morning so hubby decided to call a doctor as it was a Saturday. In France, clinics do not open on weekends (except Saturday morning). A doctor came, declared broken bone in her wrist, and she was going to the emergency. Yeah, there was no other option, the girls were supposed to go after lunch with their grandparents, but instead she went with hubby to the emergency. Emergency here doesn't mean fast treatment, they waited for like 4 hours until someone finally entertained them. I have always wondered why people had to go to emergency for this kind of things. I mean it could totally be done by a small clinic, for radiography and putting the cast. But not, such clinics don't exist, so everyone with something broken would have to wait in emergency, after the personals treat life threatening cases and have some times for this kind of patients.

My MIL prepared the costumes for them, and I think she did a good job.

Finally our turn to go knock on our neighbors' door. Around half didn't answer, some answered but said they ran out of candies, or parents not at home....

Mostly they just want candies. I don't understand why we give kids so many candies, it was just another successful western marketing campaign I guess.

Her arm cast lasted 6 weeks. She had to stop going to swimming classes and gymnastic training. She wrote and ate with her left hand, until when the cast was removed, she couldn't adjust back to using the right hand immediately. Overall, I felt that she was really brave, didn't fuss much about the inconvenient cast, I helped her wash, she mostly changed herself. At school, her classmates offered to jot down notes for her. I was so eager for it to be over, didn't like to see her in cast. Hubby said she got his gene, he broke many parts of his body when he was young. Well, I hope this is not true...